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Reliance Sees $27 Bn India Savings From Gas Reliance Industries Ltd., India's largest company by market value, will start selling natural gas this year at the equivalent of a fifth of global prices, easing the nation's import bill at a time of record crude oil costs. Reliance will sell gas at $25.20 a barrel of oil equivalent, compared with more than $135 in global markets, Chairman Mukesh Ambani told shareholders in Mumbai today. Piping the gas from the Krishna Godavari basin off the eastern coast will cut 1.14 trillion rupees ($27 billion) from India's import bill, he said. Reliance Industries is investing $5.2 billion to develop Krishna Godavari, the nation's largest field that is expected to more than double India's gas output. India, Asia's third-biggest economy, imports 70 percent of its oil and doesn't produce enough gas to meet demand from power and fertilizer makers. The Mumbai-based group's petroleum unit will also commission its new refinery in the second half of this year, Ambani said. Completion of the refinery will increase Reliance's ability to process crude oil to 1.24 million barrels per day, equivalent to about 2 percent of global capacity, he said. The 580,000-barrel-a-day Jamnagar refinery is being built adjacent to a 660,000-barrel-a-day plant owned by Reliance. The combined facility will be the world's biggest, according to the parent. Gas Cap The soaring cost of hiring rigs and exploration equipment and a government cap on gas prices may curb Reliance's profit from the new field in the Bay of Bengal that will produce 80 million cubic meters of gas a day. The government has ordered Reliance to sell natural gas from the Krishna Godavari field for $4.2 per million British thermal units, less than the $4.5 it had sought. Rig use in the Asia-Pacific region by petroleum explorers such as Chevron Corp., Total SA and Reliance rose to a 16-year high in May on increased demand for oil and gas, a report said. India, the biggest user of rigs in the Asia-Pacific, deployed 81 rigs to drill on land and water, Baker Hughes Inc. said on its Web site.